Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix Them

Robert B. Reich urges Americans to get beyond mere outrage about the nation’s increasingly concentrated wealth and corrupt politics in order to mobilize and to take back our economy and democracy. Americans can’t rely only on getting good people elected, Reich argues, because nothing positive happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington are organized to help make those things happen after the election. But in order to be effectively mobilized, we need to see the big picture.

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

In Saving Capitalism, Robert Reich reveals the entrenched cycles of power and influence that have damaged American capitalism, perpetuating a new oligarchy in which the 1 percent get ever richer and the rest - middle and working class alike - lose ever more economic agency, making for the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity since World War II.

Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America

From Robert B. Reich, passionate believer in American democracy and public servant, Reason is a guide to confronting and derailing what he sees as the mounting threat to American liberty, prosperity, and security posed by the radical conservatives, Radcons as he calls them.

Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life

Since the 1970s, and notwithstanding three recessions, the U.S. economy has soared. American capitalism has been a triumph, and it has spread throughout the world. At the same time, argues the former U.S. secretary of labor, Robert B. Reich, the effectiveness of democracy in America has declined. It has grown less responsive to the citizenry, and people are feeling more and more helpless as a result.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement.

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity

The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story - the US today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent.

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis

Since 2014, international monetary agencies have been issuing warnings to a small group of finance ministers, banks, and private equity funds: The US government's cowardly choices not to prosecute J.P. Morgan and its ilk and to bloat the economy with a $4 trillion injection of easy credit are driving us headlong toward a cliff. As Rickards shows in this frightening, meticulously researched book, governments around the world have no compunction about conspiring against their citizens.

Amazon Customer says:"worth reading for those interested in economics"

The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation's wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that "their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live." Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequality is not inevitable. He examines our current state, then teases out its implications for democracy, for monetary and budgetary policy, and for globalization. He closes with a plan for a more just and prosperous future.

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal.

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

When Bernie Sanders began his race for the presidency, it was considered by the political establishment and the media to be a "fringe" campaign, something not to be taken seriously. After all, he was just an independent senator from a small state with little name recognition. His campaign had no money, no political organization, and it was taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment. By the time Sanders' campaign came to a close, however, it was clear that the pundits had gotten it wrong.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from 45 to 72 years. The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era.

isaiah says:"The book is a great review of how we got to where we are today"

American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Rich

Like every other prospering democracy, the United States developed a mixed economy that channeled the spirit of capitalism into strong growth and healthy social development. In this bargain, government and business were as much partners as rivals. Public investments in education, science, transportation, and technology laid the foundation for broadly based prosperity.

Joseph M. Hidalgo says:"Very insightful! Technical at first but a must read for today's political environment!!"

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the Washington those politicians have given us, showing why, no matter what happens in November 2008, we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics

In today's post-truth political landscape, there is a carefully concealed but ever-growing industry of organized misinformation that exists to create and disseminate lies in the service of political agendas. Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters for America present a revelatory history of this industry - which they've dubbed Lies, Incorporated - and show how it has crippled legislative progress on issues including tobacco regulation, public health care, climate change, gun control, immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage.

The Aftershock Investor: A Crash Course in Staying Afloat in a Sinking Economy, 2nd Edition

Advice on protection and profits in the short and long term future from the experts who accurately predicted the financial crisis of 2008, and who now have more detailed information about what is yet to come.

Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown (Third Edition)

Written by the market oracles who predicted, with uncanny accuracy, the global financial meltdown and the economic chain reaction it set in motion, Aftershock offers a vivid picture of what to expect when the world's bubble economy inevitably pops. More importantly, it tells you how to protect your assets before and during the coming Aftershock and how to capitalize on the new opportunities that others will miss.

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early 19th century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America

Meet the essential Bernie Sanders, an authentic and uncompromising champion of the people. Independent United States Senator Bernie Sanders, who has a 35-year career in public service, first as Burlington, Vermont's mayor then as Vermont's sole representative to Congress, and currently as a United States senator, is now campaigning to become president of the United States.

Publisher's Summary

The author of 12 acclaimed books, Robert B. Reich is a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and has served in three national administrations.

While many blamed Wall Street for the financial meltdown, Aftershock points a finger at a national economy in which wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top - and where a grasping middle class simply does not have the resources to remain viable.

What the Critics Say

"Reich's thesis is well argued and frighteningly plausible: without a return to the 'basic bargain' (that workers are also consumers), the "aftershock" of the Great Recession includes long-term high unemployment and a political backlash - a crisis, he notes with a sort of grim optimism, that just might be painful enough to encourage necessary structural reforms." (Publishers Weekly)

I heard Mr Reich discuss this book on NPR and immediately downloaded this Audible version. His arguments are very clear, and I 100% agree with his analysis. I’m not completely sure I agree with his solutions – but they are thought provoking ideas. I energetically recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand these times

Reason #2 - Originality: Reich's big argument is that out economy is fundamentally unbalanced. That the growth of inequality that has concentrated economic gains among the top 5 percent of the populations has resulted in an inability of most Americans to adequately consume. We cannot afford to buy what we produce (a problem near and dear to the heart of any parent who works in higher education).

Reason #3 - The Higher Education Plan: Reich actually has a plan for higher education. He would make tuition free (to public institutions), and recoup the costs with a levy on future earnings for anyone who participated. His proposal is more complex than this description, and wildly unlikely to ever be enacted anywhere, but still fun to debate.

Reason #4 - History: Reich was one of the first academic popularizers that I discovered. Back in 1992, he wrote The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, in which he argued that economic gains and options would accrue to the "symbolic analysts" - those who manipulate and create information. Reich was ahead of the game in 1992, and if we had listened more carefully to his warnings we might be in better shape today.

Reason #5 - Narration: Reich narrates his own book - and does it beautifully. Usually reading what you have written does not work out so well. Narration is a skill best left to professional readers. But in this case, Reich is the right person to read his own words

I've listened to this book twice so far and I will again. I assume the print version has pictures or graphics or charts that support his arguments. But Reich is persuasive without them. You can get an idea of that by listening to his commentaries on NPR's Marketplace. But here he gets to expound more fully. He imagines a future dystopia only 10 years away and it is a scary place indeed. So much so that you are surprised that he lets us even consider the possibility. Later he tells us a possible solution. By that time you might be thinking along the lines of Churchill who supposedly said "you can count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."

One of the strongest points about this Audible book is that it is read by the author. When you get to hear him in this format, his positions are rather apolitical and strongly moral. A conservative who doesn't like Krugman and doesn't believe Liz Ann Sonders should consider the malaise that Reich describes and decide if they have a plausible alternative. A liberal will feel more than a little chastised by Reich and realize that optimism alone won't restore America.

And he didn't do a bad job either! It's probably not easy to read your own book. The recording is clear and works just fine for the ear. Reich keeps the tone conversational throughout. Kudos to the sound engineer!

The book argues: 1) that the ???Great Recession of 2008??? required us had to spend a lot of money to avoid a second great depression, 2) that we failed to fix the root problems so we???re vulnerable to a repeat of the problems, and 3) that inadequate wealth redistribution was one of the core problems that we need to fix.

In my review of Supercapitalism I said, ???[his ideas are great] ??? but as an intellectual statement, he fails to address the question, ???How do we do this??????. This book seems to take that criticism seriously. It???s full of details specifying exactly what he thinks we should do. But the result is unsettling. At times I felt hypocritical, at other times I thought that the proposed action was mealy one of many that could follow from the assumptions, sometimes I agreed with him but felt that he???d gone too far, and sometimes I agreed but felt that some other political justification would be required.

I personally think that most of the issues he???s dealing with are what I will call ???sweet spot issues???. For example too much wealth redistribution kills innovation in the manor of communism; too little wealth redistribution kills innovation in the manor of feudalism, but at the sweet spot innovation explodes and takes the economy through the stratosphere.

These sweet spot issues are hard to discuss without being quite a bit more quantitative than is easy to do in a political discourse. Perhaps, lack of numeracy is a core problem with American political discourse.

Reich gets it right with his analysis of how allowing the super-wealthy to capture the U.S. has led to its ruin, and how a rational re-distribution of wealth is a pre-condition of prosperity for both rich and poor. Very clearly written for the lay reader, this is the only explanation you need for how the financial system crashed in 2008.

Once again Robert Reich nails it!!!
Very clearly explains how we got in the financial mess, and his suggested ideas to correct it and to keep it from happening again.
This book has really stimulated my thinking, and made me realize how wrong the current experts are in the way they are trying to address the challenges, with old solutions, that have been proven not to work.

Robert Reich has a gift for explaining complex economic arguments in a language a non-economist can understand. His argument here is very compelling and goes down easy read in his friendly, familiar voice. I give it 4 instead of 5 stars because the last third of the audio book seems like filler added at the insistence of a publisher, not necessary to make his argument. But the whole is a very pleasant listen and certainly convinced me that tea party demogagues notwithstanding, the American public is looking not for smaller but for fairer government, and getting there is critical to economic recovery and to the recovery of the legitimacy of our political system.

Robert Reich I am sure gets his share of flack from the militant "Right"…and you really can’t publically show your support if you believe Dub-Yah and Reagan were “just like” having Jesus as the president…but for the rest of us…who suffer from, well actually…thinking…you might find this a good read. I give Reich a 8.5 for his presentation and 7 to 7.5 for detailed content. His target audience was the interested working American, who must live through this Investment Banker nightmare…and I appreciate his balanced explanation and suggestions to recover from the loving arms of uncontrolled Wall Street. Now, if you are really convinced that a monster, global exploiting, Wall Street controlled government will actually rebuild the middle class…well...stay away...turn up the Fox News volume...DON’T risk your mental façade!!! You have been warned.